The Subprime Good Guys

These mortgage lenders loan to poor people, strengthen communities, and are still making a profit. How do they do it?

By Daniel Gross
Posted Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008, at 7:42 AM ET

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In recent months, conservative economists and editorialists have tried to pin the blame for the international financial mess on subprime lending and subprime borrowers. If bureaucrats and social activists hadn't pressured firms to lend to the working poor, the story goes, we'd still be partying like it was 2005 and Bear Stearns would be a going concern. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page has repeatedly heaped blame on the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 law aimed at preventing redlining in minority neighborhoods. Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto in September proclaimed that "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."

This line of reasoning is absurd for several reasons. Many of the biggest subprime lenders weren't banks and thus weren't covered by the CRA. Nobody forced Bear Stearns to borrow $33 for every $1 of assets it had, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn't coerce highly compensated CEOs into rolling out no-money-down, exploding adjustable-rate mortgages. Banks will lose just as much money lending to really rich white guys like former Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld as they will lending to poor people of color in the South Bronx.

What's the Best Way To Pack a Court?

The attack on merit selection for judges.

By Bert Brandenburg
Posted Friday, Nov. 14, 2008, at 7:13 AM ET

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Michigan's voters delivered a small but telling electoral shock on Nov. 4. Chief Justice Cliff Taylor, a heavy favorite, got thumped by 100,000 votes by Circuit Judge Diane Hathaway, who was nominated just 59 days before the election. Taylor raised almost five times as much money as Hathaway and enjoyed at least $1.3 million more in supportive television ads from groups like the GOP and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. Yet he was the first high-court justice to be voted out in Michigan in 24 years. The business sector acknowledges Taylor's loss as a stinging defeat. But some of its members still see electing judges, in general, as good for their bottom line. And now they're pushing for more of it.

It's no secret that many chambers of commerce and trade associations and their foes, plaintiffs' attorneys and unions, have become the Itchy and Scratchy of judicial campaigns, willing to do whatever it takes to prevail. Since 2000, these rivals have spent millions to elect judges that they hope will rule their way, smashing funding records in at least 15 states. (As an Ohio AFL-CIO official put it: "We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.") In the last few election cycles, businesses have outspent the other side and won more often than not. But the specter of judges chasing after money unnerves the public: three in four Americans believe campaign cash affects courtroom decisions, according to a bipartisan poll that my organization, Justice at Stake, commissioned. The latest John Grisham thriller casts a toxic tycoon buying a court race just to win a case.

FDIC, U.S. Treasury clash on anti-foreclosure plan

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Nov 14, 2008 15:10 EST
By Karey Wutkowski and Patrick Rucker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. banking regulator unveiled a plan on Friday to prevent about 1.5 million foreclosures, breaking ranks with the Bush administration by demanding bailout funds be diverted from banks to consumers.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said the plan would modify millions of delinquent mortgages and the government would reward participating lenders by sharing the cost of defaults on restructured loans.

Turley: Blanket pardons would be 'final nail in Bush's coffin'

President Bush has consistently claimed executive privilege in response to attempts to investigate potentially illegal actions by his administration, and it now seems that he could continue to make that claim even after leaving office. There is also speculation that Bush could issue blanket pardons for anyone who might have engaged in torture or other criminal activities under his orders.

On Wednesday, an article in the New York Times noted that President Truman had invoked executive privilege in 1953, when he was no longer president, to avoid having to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Congress did not challenge that unprecedented claim, and legal cases involving Watergate and Iran-Contra have given it some tentative support.

Here come the liberals

British politicians, commentators and the public like to believe in their sturdy autonomy. We have arrived at our decisions as freeborn men and women. We debate our ideas furiously in pubs, on radio phone-ins or via letters to the editor. We read the opinion pages. We elect a sovereign parliament that passes the laws and regulations that we mandate.

The truth is more subtle. We dance to another country's tune. It is the United States that makes the political, cultural and intellectual weather. It is the rich American institutes that develop the ideas for XYZ plan or ABC radical reform. Our academics, especially in the social sciences, want to get published in the American journals and ensure they please the editor in question. Our politicians watch closely to see what works in the US. We enjoy their movies and use their technology. The West Wing and Mad Men are part of our culture, as are Sex and the City and Friends. We think we are free; we are painfully and excessively influenced by the US.

Robert Fisk's World: There is no end to the centuries of savagery in Afghanistan

Geneva Conventions were supposed to end the mass destruction of human life

Saturday, 15 November 2008

Back in Afghanistan, the mind turns to the small matter of savagery. Not the routine cruelty of war but the deliberate inhumanity with which we behave. The torture and killing of prisoners in this pitiful place – the American variety in Bagram and the Taliban variety in Helmand – is a kind of routine of history. Even execution has to be made more painful. A knife is more terrible than a bullet. The cult of the suicide bomber in the Middle East began its life in Lebanon, moved to "Palestine", arrived in Iraq, leached over the border here to Afghanistan and passed effortlessly through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan. And New York. And Washington. And London...

Are human beings at war – any kind of war – by definition bound to commit atrocities? The International Committee of the Red Cross tried to answer this question in a report four years ago. Were combatants unaware of international humanitarian law? Unlikely, I would think. They just don't care. The Red Cross enquiry interviewed hundreds of fighters in Colombia, Bosnia, Georgia – a bit of real prescience, there, on the part of the ICRC – and the Congo, and suggested that those who commit reprehensible acts see themselves as victims, that this then gives them the right to act savagely against their opponents. Certainly, this might apply to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, very definitely to the Serbs of Bosnia – I'm not so sure about Georgia – and quite definitely to the Taliban (not least when we've been bombing more wedding parties).

Lehman administrators' task will dwarf Enron, creditors told

• European arm has more than $500bn of debt
• Collapsed bank's creditors expect less than 10%

Simon Bowers
guardian.co.uk
Saturday November 15 2008

Administrators grappling with the European arm of the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers have told creditors their task is "10 times as big and as complicated" as the unwinding of Enron.

Speaking after the first creditors' meeting, a team from PricewaterhouseCoopers said they had identified more than $1tn (£670bn) in assets and liabilities that need to be accounted for.

At the meeting, held behind closed doors in a conference hall at the O2 dome in London, the lead administrator, Tony Lomas, told hundreds of representatives and lawyers that he had recovered about $5bn out of a potential $550bn of obligations owing to creditors. A further $22.3bn of client assets had been identified, all of which will be returned to their owners.

New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog Food

Ex-employees Tell ABC News the Firm Used Dog Food Sacks to Smuggle Unauthorized Weapons to Iraq

By BRIAN ROSS and JASON RYAN
November 14, 2008

A federal grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations the controversial private security firm Blackwater illegally shipped assault weapons and silencers to Iraq, hidden in large sacks of dog food, ABCNews.com has learned.

Under State Department rules, Blackwater is prohibited from using certain assault weapons and silencers in Iraq because they are considered "offensive" weapons inappropriate for Blackwater's role as a private security firm protecting US diplomatic missions.

New program teaches preschoolers reading skills, getting along with others

A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies shows that it's possible to teach preschoolers the pre-reading skills they need for later school success, while at the same time fostering the socials skills necessary for making friends and avoiding conflicts with their peers.

Obama's Chance to End the Fantasy That Is Star Wars

The US has spent $160bn – only to increase the danger to itself and the rest of us

by Johann Hari

The world is still pleasurably suffering from Woah-bama whiplash. Did he really win? Are we all awake? And would anybody mind if he starts a few months early? The need for decisions is rapidly piling up – and one of Obama's first choices is whether to bring to an end one of the strangest episodes in American political history.

This is the tale of how a man with Alzheimer's Disease came up with a physically impossible fantasy based on a B-movie he once starred in – and how the US spent $160bn trying to make it come true. These billions succeeded only in making some defence companies very rich, and making Russia point its nukes at Poland and the UK once more. And if Obama doesn't decide to close this long-running farce now, it will make one more contribution to world history: the number of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world will dramatically increase.

Glenn Greenwald: Post-partisan harmony vs. the rule of law

A Washington Post article today on the need to restore confidence in the Justice Department quotes former high-level Clinton DOJ official Robert Litt urging the new Obama administration to avoid any investigations or prosecutions of Bush lawbreaking:

Obama will have to do a careful balancing act. At a conference in Washington this week, former department criminal division chief Robert S. Litt asked that the new administration avoid fighting old battles that could be perceived as vindictive, such as seeking to prosecute government officials involved in decisions about interrogation and the gathering of domestic intelligence. Human rights groups have called for such investigations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

Soros says deep recession inevitable, depression possible

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday. Highlights:

* Said "a deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out."

* Said hedge funds were an integral part of the financial market bubble which now has burst.

Global Crisis -- Made in America

Joseph E. Stiglitz, 65: It should come as no surprise in a world of globalization that it's not just the good things that move more easily across borders, but the bad things as well. Now, America has exported its downturn to the world.

A global financial crisis requires a global solution. Uncoordinated macro-economic policies, for instance, have contributed to Europe’s problems. When the European Central Bank refused to lower interest rates earlier this year, focused as it was on the threat of inflation, while America's did, focused on the impending downturn, it led to a stronger euro. This in turn contributed to Europe's downturn, though it made America's GDP numbers look better for a while. Now, Europe's downturn is ricocheting back on America: Europe’s weaknesses are contributing to America's.

Retail sales sink as Dems seek auto industry loans

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
1 hr 23 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The worst monthly drop on record for retail sales set off new alarm bells about the economy Friday, stepping up pressure on policymakers to figure out how to combat what increasingly looks to be a severe recession. Confronting opposition by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress said they would try next week to pass $25 billion in emergency loans for the auto industry, so wobbly that one or more of Detroit's Big Three could go under.

And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., also breaking with the administration, proposed having the government spend $24 billion to back mortgages and help 1.5 million Americans avoid foreclosures.

More Allegations of Misconduct in Alabama Governor Case

By Adam Zagorin / Washington
Friday, Nov. 14, 2008

Next month in Atlanta, a federal court will hear the high-profile appeal of former Alabama governor Don E. Siegelman, whose conviction on corruption charges in 2006 became one of the most publicly debated cases to emerge from eight years of controversy at the Bush Justice Department. Now new documents highlight alleged misconduct by the Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney and other prosecutors in the case, including what appears to be extensive and unusual contact between the prosecution and the jury.

Wall Street's Bailout is a Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene -- Why Aren't the Dems Doing Something About It?

By Naomi Klein, The Nation
Posted on November 14, 2008, Printed on November 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107000/

The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.

In a moment of high panic in late September, the U.S. Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed -- a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice."

Right Minded

By Rick Perlstein
November 13th, 2008 - 10:01am ET

One of the jobs we'll be taking on here at the Big Con will be to monitor the Obama Hate. Please do send in your ripest examples to me at rperlstein@ourfuture.org. Forthwith, our first plunge.

One of the right-wing listservs I monitor is targeted to conservative academics. (And, may I say, the level of intellectual discourse on it is shockingly low. Right-wingers are always whining about being shut out of academia by a liberal conspiracy. When will they start taking some personal responsibility for too often not deserving to play the intellectual game at the highest level?)

Bailout Lacks Oversight Despite Billions Pledged

Watchdog Panel Is Empty; Report Is Unfinished

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008; A01

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Bush may be able to block subpoenas even after leaving office

President-Elect Obama seems tepid on investigating Bush

President George W. Bush appears likely to claim executive privilege in blocking subpoenas after he leaves office, according to a report Wednesday.

Three Congressional investigations into the President and his administration remain open. They include the role of Bush advisers Karl Rove and Harriet Miers in the firing of eight US attorneys, the prosecution of former Democratic Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and the torture of detainees held by US forces.

Paulson abandons plans to buy up America's toxic mortgage assets

The US government has scrapped the central plank of its $700bn financial rescue strategy by abandoning plans to buy toxic mortgage-related assets which have weighed down the balance sheets of troubled banks and Wall Street institutions.

In a sharp about-turn, treasury secretary Henry Paulson announced yesterday he no longer believed that purchasing assets would be the most effective use of the administration's bail-out fund.

Nanoparticles trigger cell death?

Nanoparticles that are one milliard of a metre in size are widely used, for example, in cosmetics and food packaging materials. There are also significant amounts of nanoparticles in exhaust emissions. However, very little is yet known of their health effects, because only a very small portion of research into nanoparticles is focused on their health and safety risks. Nanoparticles have even been dubbed the asbestos of the 2000s bys some researchers, and therefore a considerable threat to people's health. While the use of nanoparticles in consumer products increases, their follow-up procedures and legislation are lagging behind. The European Union chemicals directive REACH does not even touch upon nanomaterials.

Obama under the gun over Iraq

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The promotion of Robert M Gates as president-elect Barack Obama's secretary of defense appears to be the key element in a broad campaign by military officials and their supporters in the political elite and the news media to pressure Obama into dropping his plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq in as little as 16 months.

Despite subtle and unsubtle pressures to compromise on his withdrawal plan, however, Obama is likely to pass over Gates and stand firm on his campaign pledge on military withdrawal from Iraq, according to a well-informed source close to the Obama camp.

Regulators nix credit card debt forgiveness plan

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon
Wed Nov 12, 9:23 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Federal bank regulators have rejected a request by banks and consumer advocates for a program to let lenders forgive huge portions of credit card debt.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency rejected the request for a special program that would allow as much as 40 percent of credit card debt to be forgiven for consumers who don't qualify for existing repayment plans.

An unusual alliance of financial industry interests and consumer advocates, represented by the Financial Services Roundtable and the Consumer Federation of America, made the request to the Treasury Department agency on Oct. 29. It demonstrated the urgency of the situation in a deepening economic crisis: consumers — even those with strong credit records — defaulting at high levels on their credit cards, while banks battered by the credit crisis bleed tens of billions from the losses.

Michigan Republicans change tune on 'socialism'

"I was not elected to abet American socialism," Rep. Thad McCotter, the Republican Policy chairman, said in a press release issued before Congress voted on its $700 billion Wall Street bailout last month.

But after winning reelection, McCotter - along with other Michigan House Republicans - appears to be changing his tune.

River restoration bill finally nears completion

By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- San Joaquin River restoration efforts, a roller-coaster ride if there ever was one, now have cleared what could be the last big hump prior to congressional approval.

This week, negotiators resolved some final controversies over the bill's language. This isn't the first time negotiators have congratulated themselves, but the latest Capitol Hill progress sounds final.

"I think it should satisfy all concerned," Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday. "As far as I'm concerned, this is it."

Obama's victory stirs Europe to confront race issue

By Julie Sell | McClatchy Newspapers

LONDON — For months before Barack Obama's election last week, his popularity ratings in Europe soared to levels never matched in America. Now that Obama is headed to the Oval Office as the first African-American president, his victory is prompting Europeans to confront some uncomfortable questions about race within their own countries.

In Britain, the head of the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission sparked a public debate for saying that a minority politician as "brilliant" as Obama would struggle to "break through the institutional stranglehold on power within the Labor Party."

Thomas Frank: Goodbye to All That

A cheap cynicism has brought us to disaster. Let's try a little audacity.

By THOMAS FRANK

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I and the beginning of our own time.

The world remembers the Great War for the supreme pointlessness with which it slaughtered an entire generation of British, French, German and other combatants. We remember its static, unmoving Western Front, a stationary death-mill into which brave men were fed for years without making any appreciable difference. We remember the poison gas, the moonscape of shattered trees and churned-up earth, the incompetent leadership that could imagine no way of conducting the war other than repeated frontal attacks. Above all we remember the catastrophic battles -- in the attack on the Somme in 1916 the British army walked forward in broad daylight toward entrenched German machine guns and suffered nearly 60,000 casualties in one day.

8 Ways to Green Your Yard

As winter approaches, you may be gearing up for months of being indoors. But this season is an excellent time to consider your outdoor property, with days shortening, foliage falling and rough weather looming. Here are eight ways to be eco-conscious with the most natural part of your home:

Top Two Officials In U.S. Intelligence Expect to Lose Jobs

Obama Silent Amid Conflicting Advice

By Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 12, 2008; A01

The nation's top two intelligence officers expect to be replaced by President-elect Barack Obama early in his administration, according to senior intelligence officials.

A number of influential congressional Democrats oppose keeping Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden in their posts because both have publicly supported controversial Bush administration policies on interrogation and telephone surveillance. One Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee said there is a "consensus" view on the matter.

Saxby Chambliss: Attacks on Cleland Were Fair, Regrets Not Getting Enough of "Our Folks" Out to Vote

From Hannity and Colmes Nov. 10, 2008

COLMES: Why do you think you’ve been unable…[to] close the deal with the people of Georgia in terms of what happened on Election Day?

CHAMBLISS: Well, listen, we have, for the first time in the history the our state, a 30-day advanced vote period, and let’s give the Obama people credit. They did a good job of getting out their vote early.

There was a high percentage of minority vote, and I am tickled to death that as many Georgians as did examined their right to vote. That’s what make our election process the envy of the whole free world, but we weren’t able to get enough of our folks out on Election Day. That's a challenge to get them out in a run-off but we look forward to that challenge and I'm pretty excited about looking towards Dec. 2nd.

Keep Larry Summers as Far as Possible from the U.S. Treasury

By Mark Ames, TheNation.com
Posted on November 12, 2008, Printed on November 12, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106553/

We all know in the backs of our minds that Barack Obama's incredible victory will eventually be followed by disappointment. But does it have to come so soon, and hit so hard? The answer will be yes, if Lawrence Summers is named treasury secretary in the president-elect's cabinet, as many observers believe will be the case. Summers was one of the key architects of our financial crisis -- hiring him to fix the economy makes as much sense as appointing Paul Wolfowitz to oversee the Iraq withdrawal. And when you look at the trail of economic destruction Summers left behind in other crisis-stricken countries who sought his advice in the past, then "terror" might be a more appropriate word than "disappointment."

College Loan Slavery: Student Debt Is Getting Way Out of Hand

By Nan Mooney, AlterNet
Posted on November 12, 2008, Printed on November 12, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106445/

Raya Golden thought she was handling college in a responsible way. She didn't apply until she felt ready to dedicate herself to her studies. She spread her schooling across five years so she could work part-time throughout. She checked that her school, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, had a high post-graduate employment rate. But there were two things she hadn't counted on. The first was the $75,000 in nonsubsidized federal student loans she'd have to take out for tuition and those living expenses her part-time jobs selling hotdogs and making lattes couldn't cover. The second was that she'd graduate into a workforce teetering on the edge of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

"All of a sudden the work just dried up," says Golden, who got her degree in traditional illustration. "I've sent out probably a hundred resumes from L.A. to Canada, but I haven't had a single response. Experienced people are getting laid off, so why would anyone take a chance on a college grad?"

Companies push Congress for pension relief

By STEPHEN MANNING, AP Business Writer Stephen Manning, Ap Business Writer Wed Nov 12, 12:03 am ET

WASHINGTON – With pension funds facing billions of dollars in shortfalls as markets plunge, a range of companies from Ford to Verizon are pushing Congress to suspend portions of a two-year old law they say could force them to make job cuts as they shift scarce money into ailing retirement pools.

The lobbying effort aims to change a 2006 pension reform law as part of any economic stimulus plan in a lame-duck session of Congress that begins next week. Companies warn the current law could force them to tie up large sums of cash they desperately need in the face of a global recession.

Roughly 300 companies and business groups plan to make the request in a letter Wednesday to congressional committees. The authors include some of the nation's biggest corporate names from a wide range of sectors, including Ford Motor Co., IBM Corp., Pfizer Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.

The Midnight De-Regulation Express

In His Last Days in Power, George W. Bush Wants to Change Some Rules

By Matthew Blake 11/11/08 6:01 AM

It’s something of a tradition– administrations using their final weeks in power to ram through a slew of federal regulations. With the election grabbing the headlines, outgoing federal bureaucrats quietly propose and finalize rules that can affect the health and safety of millions.

The Bush administration has followed this tradition and expanded it. Up to 90 proposed regulations could be finalized before President George W. Bush leaves office Jan. 20. If adopted, these rules could weaken workplace safety protections, allow local police to spy in the “war on terror” and make it easier for federal agencies to ignore the Endangered Species Act.

Corn-fed animals are fuelling America

Biofuel demand is not the only market pressure being felt by US corn farmers. Much of the fast food that powers Americans - a $100 billion annual market - is indirectly made from corn as well, according to researchers in Hawaii.

Hope Jahren and Rebecca Kraft of the University of Hawaii purchased 486 servings of hamburgers, fries and chicken sandwiches from McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Boston and Baltimore.

Report: Greenhouse gases imperil oceans' web of life

By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Corals, lobsters, clams and many other ocean creatures — including some at the bottom of the food chain — may be unable to withstand the increasing acidity of the oceans brought on by growing global-warming pollution, according to a report Tuesday from the advocacy group Oceana.

Based on scientific findings of the past several years, Oceana's report "Acid Test" examines the far-reaching consequences of the accumulation of heat-trapping gases, particularly carbon dioxide, in the world's oceans.

Probe sought of Bush handling of Alaska oil-spill case

By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — An environmental watchdog group asked the Department of Justice's inspector general on Monday to investigate whether the department had prematurely halted a criminal prosecution of BP for a 2006 oil spill in Alaska.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed the complaint on behalf of Scott West, who as the special agent in charge for the Environmental Protection Agency participated in the federal and state investigation of the spill.

'Arid aquaculture' among livelihoods promoted to relieve worsening pressure on world's drylands

4-year study calls for urgent reforms to avert further desertification threatening 'poorest of the poor' worldwide

"Arid aquaculture" using ponds filled with salty, undrinkable water for fish production is one of several options experts have proven to be an effective potential alternative livelihood for people living in desertified parts of the world's expanding drylands.

In a report released today, researchers with the United Nations University, the International Centre on Agricultural Research in Dryland Areas (ICARDA), and UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program say alternatives to traditional crop farming and livestock rearing will need to be put in place in drylands in order to mitigate human causes of desertification.

Paulson adds to AIG folly

By Peter Morici

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's decision to inject another US$27 billion into failed insurer AIG and raise the taxpayers' investment to $150 billion suggests he is more intent on helping his pals on Wall Street than protecting taxpayer interests.

AIG has solid businesses in industrial, commercial and life insurance, but like a lot of financial firms was attracted to easy profits writing credit default swaps on mortgage-backed bonds - so called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose

By Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

Documents linking Iran to nuclear weapons push may have been fabricated

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source -- most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.

FBI Tracked Halberstam for Over Two Decades

Posted on Nov 8, 2008

This is spooky: A group of journalism students from City University of New York filed a Freedom of Information request and discovered that the FBI tracked the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam for more than two decades.

Paul Krugman: Franklin Delano Obama?

Suddenly, everything old is New Deal again. Reagan is out; F.D.R. is in. Still, how much guidance does the Roosevelt era really offer for today’s world?

The answer is, a lot. But Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.’s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.

About the New Deal’s long-run achievements: the institutions F.D.R. built have proved both durable and essential. Indeed, those institutions remain the bedrock of our nation’s economic stability. Imagine how much worse the financial crisis would be if the New Deal hadn’t insured most bank deposits. Imagine how insecure older Americans would feel right now if Republicans had managed to dismantle Social Security.

The New Trough

The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create

NAOMI KLEIN
Posted Nov 13, 2008 12:00 AM

Editor's note: The online version of this story has been amended to reflect developments since the publication of the print edition.

On October 13th, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced the team of "seasoned financial veterans" that will be handling the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, one name jumped out: Reuben Jeffery III, who was initially tapped to serve as chief investment officer for the massive new program.

On the surface, Jeffery looks like a classic Bush appointment. Like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he's an alum of Goldman Sachs, having worked on Wall Street for 18 years. And as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2005 to 2007, he proudly advocated "flexibility" in regulation — a laissez-faire approach that failed to rein in the high-risk trading at the heart of the meltdown.

Pentagon board says cuts essentia

Tells Obama to slash large weapons programs

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | November 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - A senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department's current budget is "not sustainable," and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military's most prized weapons programs.

The briefings were prepared by the Defense Business Board, an internal management oversight body. It contends that the nation's recent financial crisis makes it imperative that the Pentagon and Congress slash some of the nation's most costly and troubled weapons to ensure they can finance the military's most pressing priorities.

A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks

With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008; A01

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

Bush Spy Revelations Anticipated When Obama Is Sworn In

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, Americans won't just get a new president; they might finally learn the full extent of George W. Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping.

Since The New York Times first revealed in 2005 that the NSA was eavesdropping on citizens' overseas phone calls and e-mail, few additional details about the massive "Terrorist Surveillance Program" have emerged. That's because the Bush administration has stonewalled, misled and denied documents to Congress, and subpoenaed the phone records of the investigative reporters.

The Top Ten Power Brokers of the Religious Right

By Rob Boston, Church & State Magazine
Posted on November 10, 2008, Printed on November 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/103359/

For the past two years, numerous media pundits have been all abuzz over the so-called "death" of the Religious Right. There is one problem, however: Someone forgot to tell the Religious Right.

A recent Americans United study of the finances and influence of the Religious Right shows a movement that is very much alive and kicking. Indeed, our research shows that the nation's leading Religious Right organizations took in more than half a billion dollars over a recent 12-month period. Several of the organizations reported dramatic increases in their budgets; only a few showed a drop.

Eight Ways Obama Can Make Change Immediately

By Allan Hunt Badiner, AlterNet
Posted on November 10, 2008, Printed on November 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106306/

"Yes We Can" was sung to victory particularly by millions of young people, single women and black and brown people of all ages. These are the soldiers in Barack Obama's great army -- poised to prove that the election was just the first battle in a war of many. Just as the campaign itself was a threat to the status quo and the powerful interests that profit from it, so will be much of Obama's new agenda, and it will be up to all of us to make ourselves heard again and again.

Obama's victory is clearly historic, but does it really change the world? Yes and no. A dark cloud has finally passed, and there is a bright opening for a future to be possible. But for the immediate future there will still be troops in Iraq, there will still be an economic crisis, there will still be famine and conflict in Africa, and there will still be terrorist elements all over the world aiming their anger at the United States and the rest of the developed world.

The Energy Challenge of Our Lifetime

By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on November 10, 2008, Printed on November 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106308/

Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy. After all, energy policy -- so totally mishandled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration -- figures in each of the other major challenges facing the new president, including the economy, the environment, foreign policy, and our Middle Eastern wars. Most of all, it will prove a monumental challenge because the United States faces an energy crisis of unprecedented magnitude that is getting worse by the day.

The U.S. needs energy -- lots of it. Day in and day out, this country, with only 5% of the world's population, consumes one quarter of the world's total energy supply. About 40% of our energy comes from oil: some 20 million barrels, or 840 million gallons a day. Another 23% comes from coal, and a like percentage from natural gas. Providing all this energy to American consumers and businesses, even in an economic downturn, remains a Herculean task, and will only grow more so in the years ahead. Addressing the environmental consequences of consuming fossil fuels at such levels, all emitting climate-altering greenhouse gases, only makes this equation more intimidating.

Frank Rich: It Still Felt Good the Morning After

ON the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy.

Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic. Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.

Dismal economic news — and it's certain to get worse

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Coming on the heels of awful business and economic-growth reports, Friday's dismal news that the unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent and employers shed another 240,000 jobs in October made it clear that the U.S. economy is now in recession.

The Bush administration and even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been reluctant to use the "R" word, but few economists dispute that the world's largest economy is officially there.

"I think it's awfully hard to say you're not in a recession at this point. Ten consecutive drops in payrolls, I think any way you look at it is a recession," said David Wyss, chief economist for the New York rating agency Standard & Poor's.

How the thundering herd faltered and fell

By Gretchen Morgenson

Sunday, November 9, 2008

"We've got the right people in place as well as good risk management and controls." — E. Stanley O'Neal, 2005

There were high-fives all around Merrill Lynch headquarters in new York as 2006 drew to a close. The firm's performance was breathtaking; revenue and earnings had soared, and its shares were up 40 percent for the year.

And Merrill's decision to invest heavily in the mortgage industry was paying off handsomely. So handsomely, in fact, that on Dec. 30 that year, it essentially doubled down by paying $1.3 billion for First Franklin, a lender specializing in risky mortgages.

The deal would provide Merrill with even more loans for one of its lucrative assembly lines, an operation that bundled and repackaged mortgages so they could be resold to other investors.

Still weeks to go, but America tunes into Obama as Bush fades from view

Power drains from the White House and Obama's stature continues to rise as he takes to the airwaves for first radio address

• Paul Harris in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 00.01 GMT
• The Observer, Sunday November 9 2008
  

As George Bush sits in the Oval Office, perhaps the lamest of all lame ducks, Barack Obama is looking presidential for the press, fielding calls from world leaders and mulling appointments to his new cabinet.

Yesterday, Bush's weekly radio address to the nation was answered directly by the man who will replace him in January. In most weeks the Democrats' response to Bush's musings is given by an up-and-coming politician or someone who highlights a particular issue. But this time Obama himself took to the airwaves.

The Threat of Fairness

by Joel McNally

As right-wing talk show hosts see their political power waning in America, they are now worried about a brand new threat to their bizarre version of democracy.

After dominating the public airwaves for two decades, right-wing radio is terrified that a new administration will be more open to attempts in Congress to require talk radio to, gulp, be fair.

I became aware of this last week when I was invited by the Marquette Law School student chapter of the conservative Federalist Society to debate two right-wing talk show hosts, Charlie Sykes from WTMJ/AM in Milwaukee and Guy Benson from WIND/AM in Chicago.

Media Tell Obama--Don't Be a Lefty Like Clinton

Rewriting the '94 election to find a centrist moral

11/7/08

Immediately after Barack Obama was pronounced the victor in the 2008 presidential election, corporate media began to tell him how he ought to govern--in most cases, urging him to hew toward the center. To support their argument, many journalists pointed to President Bill Clinton's first term to find lessons in centrism for Obama. But are media getting the history wrong?

In that "unhappy first year in office," wrote the Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus (11/5/08), "Democratic congressional leaders pushed a new president to the left--leading to the party's loss of both houses in the midterm elections of 1994."

Blaming Black Voters for Prop 8 Loss is Wrong and Destructive

Memo from Kathryn Kolbert, President, People For the American Way Foundation, to Progressive Allies and Journalists

Nov. 7 — The past 72 hours have brought an extraordinary range of emotions — great joy at the election of Barack Obama and defeat of John McCain, and sadness and anger at the passage of anti-gay initiatives in Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, and California. That sadness has turned to outrage at the speed with which some white gay activists began blaming African Americans — sometimes in appallingly racist ways — for the defeat of Proposition 8. This is inexcusable.

As a mother who has raised two children in a 30-year relationship with another woman, I fully understand the depth of hurt and anger at voters’ rejection of our families’ equality. But responding to that hurt by lashing out at African Americans is deeply wrong and offensive — not to mention destructive to the goal of advancing equality.

After the Imperial Presidency

By JONATHAN MAHLER

Ask a long-serving member of the United States Senate — like, say, Patrick Leahy of Vermont — to reflect on the Senate’s role in our constitutional government, and he will almost invariably tell you a story from our nation’s founding that may or may not be apocryphal. It concerns an exchange that supposedly took place between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington in 1787, the year of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. Jefferson, who had been serving as America’s ambassador to France during the convention, asked Washington over breakfast upon his return why he and the other framers created a Senate — in addition to the previously planned House of Representatives and presidency — in his absence.

“Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” Washington reportedly replied.

“To cool it,” Jefferson answered.

“Even so,” Washington said, “we pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”